Selecting the Right Blogging Service
Image Source: http://www.utopiafilmfestival.org/images/2007movies/balancing-act.jpg
Running a blog service for educators isn’t unlike balancing a load of boxes, as the image above illustrates. It’s tough work and I’m grateful to those companies that have chosen to offer free services to educators. Irrespective of their commitment to service, educators are looking for services that meet certain criteria. Some criterion can be set aside, but others—such as ad-free blogs for users—are non-negotiable in some environments.
A few months ago, I made the decision to abandon Thingamablog and switch to something else. When I started with Thinga, I was just playing around. 7,000 entries later, I was done playing and looking for something easier than FTPing files to a server.
But what should that something easier be? I was strongly leaning towards Edublogs.org but then, as a result of constant upgrades and changes there—which undoubtedly improved their service even as it made it possible for them to put advertisements everywhere if you weren’t a paid subscriber—I found myself looking elsewhere…it was just poor timing but it factored into my decision. I haven’t paid a cent for my blog hosting, only for domain registrations (mguhlin.net and mguhlin.org) and image storage space for my photos/images (which I would have paid anyways to archive my photo library). So, essentially, I blog for free.
The moment of truth came when I had to present at a Texas leadership event and wanted a quick blog to setup. Though I’ve always eschewed Google’s Blogger—the dashboard with its “next blog” turned me off (you can turn this feature off by getting a 3rd party template or adding special code to your existing template), and the fact that Blogger was blocked in K-12 schools—I decided to throw that out and go with Blogger. I was pleasantly surprised by ease of use, and improvements in Google’s Blogger/Blogspot service since I first looked at it years ago.
Now, as we have new educators joining the ranks of the edublogerati (whatever the heck that is), the question is, what blog tool to recommend? Obviously, “serious” bloggers will want to host their own content on a server, even though I’ve abandoned that expectation for my own blogs. There’s no reason why I can’t do it (I have access to a server), I have the know-how, but why bother? And, it’s so easy to incrementally back-up my blog entries and comments to Wordpress blog running on my own computer (which I bring up just for that purpose) that having your own copy isn’t the roadblock it once was.
So, what criteria should we be encouraging our new edubloggers to consider? Here is a list suggested by my personal learning network (via Twitter), and I’ve added a few myself:
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No advertisements - Ads are universally spurned in K-12 education. In my district, they are blocked by the appearance of policy documents that fill the space where an ad would go on a web page. So, you could be reading a blog entry but stumble smack dab into an blocked advertisement, not to mention an inappropriate advertisement!
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Free as in no cost - While die-hard techies will want to manage their image with a blog on their own server, sometimes paying serious money for it (just read Wes Fryer’s story) or at least having to pay for bandwidth usage, most folks just want a place to ruminate and a way to back up their work.
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Easy to back up the work - Everyone likes to be able to back up their hard work, especially since blogging is something that is really a LONG-TERM commitment. After all, I wasn’t kidding when I said blogging was about being a lifelong learner…lifelong is as long a commitment as you get. I’ve been blogging almost 5 years (or is it 6?) and I have over 7000 blog entries on my original blog site (http://mguhlin.net) and quickly approaching 400 blog entries on this site (http://mguhlin.org).
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Easy to Manage Group Blogging - Although most blogs are solitary affairs, the old writing alone bit because it’s so much fun and miserable (don’t we like to play, “Ain’t it Awful?”), it’s great to invite others to participate. As a classroom teacher, I’d love to have my grade level or team join me on maintaining a group blog so that i don’t have to be a solitary sojourner, or wandering learner.
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Up time - I wasn’t the only one who was disturbed by an Edublogs.org blog outage that seemed to last for some time. This expectation that a blog platform actually work in the face of a not-working reality meant that some asked themselves, “If it’s not going to work reliably, do I really want to use it?” So, up-time is definitely important!!
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Frequent Updates - Although up-time is important, it’s also critical that frequent updates be done to keep the service fresh and alive. After all, if I want to embed new media in a blog entry, the service needs to allow me the most flexibility without restricting me to its security policy (like Wordpress.com does!).
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Easy admin/user console - The administration console has to be drop-dead easy. One of the best blogs I’ve seen that does this is Apple’s Blog user interface. Wow, talk about a simple interface. The new WordPress 2.7 interface is pretty easy to navigate now, unlike what it once was. Google Blogger is also fairly easy, too.
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Easy to Embed Media and Content - Being able to embed media is critical. If I want to embed VoiceThreads, YouTube, Beep.tv, whatever, I should be able to. RSS feeds, Delicious/Diigo, all of that needs to be easy to drop in. I love Google’s simple interface for doing this in Blogger.
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Easy to Adjust Look-n-Feel - Changing the look-n-feel of a blog site is a must. Most sites are template driven. Wordpress is the best in regards to this, although it’s possible to do it with other blog sites.
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Add Blog Entries via 3rd Party Tools - One of the niftiest things with the Typepad blog I contribute to is being able to use ScribeFire to update content. I also love being able to post to Blogger and Edublogs.org via Diigo Annotation/Social Bookmarking Tool and Flock browser. These additional tools make it possible to share your ideas no matter what you’re doing and facilitate blogging.
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Redundancy - Terrorism, hurricanes, user error, what happens when these wipe out a facility where the servers hosting your blog content are stored? Is there somewhere else that your blog’s data are stored? Will their disaster recovery plan allow for uninterrupted service no matter that their primary facility has been destroyed or knocked offline by natural disasters or human acts (deliberate or otherwise)?
Thanks to Scott Weidig (VanishingPoint on Twitter, VanishingPoint.edublogs.org) for contributing several of these criteria! Once we get the list developed, it will be worth plugging in some popular blogging services and then rating them according to the criteria above! Don’t be shy about sharing your thoughts!
Quick Disclaimer: Even though I use Edublogs.org above in some negative examples, I want to make it clear that James Farmer and his folks are AWESOME for providing this service to teachers and students. I have my own share of Edublogs converts that leave my workshops vowing to use Edublogs.org. However, every service can be improved and this kind of feedback gathering/conversation helps accomplish that (at least, it helps me better understand the criteria and get intouch with what others in my PLN are thinking). I encourage Typepad users to speak up about non-negotiables.
Blogger/Blogspot Specific Tips:
- How to Remove the Dashboard or NEXT BLOG: Go to LAYOUT->EDIT HTML and paste in the following line down below the Variables section but above the Body section:
#navbar-iframe {height:0px;visibility:hidden;display:none} - View Other Blogspot/Blogger Tips I’ve Learned
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